Pope Francis’ Lamborghini sells for more than $850,000 at charity auction

Posted:
Monday, May 14, 2018 1:20 PM EDT

By Stephen Edelstein

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Lamborghini gave Pope Francis a Huracn LP580-2 painted in the white-and-gold colors of the Vatican last November. Not surprisingly, Pope Francis decided to sell the car to generate money for charity rather than keeping it for himself. The Papal Lamborghini recently rolled across the block at an RM Sotheby’s auction, selling for 715,000 euros, or about $857,000 at current exchange rates.

The final sale price makes the roughly $200,000 sticker price of a normal Huracn LP580-2 seem almost reasonable by comparison. Granted, this car had the benefit of a very famous owner, one who not only signed the car, but also blessed it. Proceeds from the sale will go to multiple charities, including a group working to rebuild villages in Iraq’s Nineveh Plain, an organization helping abused and trafficked women, and two groups helping women and children in central Africa.

Aside from its special paint job and connection to Pope Francis, the car is a stock Huracn LP580-2. That means it’s the entry-level model in the Huracn lineup, with a 5.2-liter V10 generating 572 horsepower (the “580” represents the output in metric) and 398 pound-feet of torque that is sent to the rear wheels (hence the “-2”). The “LP” stands for “longitudinal posteriore,” referring to the longitudinally mid-mounted engine.Other Huracn variants have more power and all-wheel drive, but the LP580-2 is still capable of 0 to 62 mph in 3.4 seconds and a top speed of 198 mph, according to Lamborghini.

Pope Francis’ everyday transportation tends to be a bit less dramatic. The pontiff has used everything from a Jeep Wrangler to a Hyundai Santa Fe on foreign tours, and received an Opel Ampera-e electric car (a rebadged version of the Chevrolet Bolt EV) last year for use within Vatican City. He once used a 1984 Renault 4 as his personal car.

This isn’t the first time a car connected to Pope Francis has gone to the auction block. A Fiat 500L he used during a visit to Philadelphia was auctioned off for charity in 2016. Unsurprisingly, the little Fiat didn’t bring quite as much money as the Lamborghini. It sold for $82,000, which is admittedly about four times the 500L’s U.S. base price.